Building Decks

I was wondering if any of you more experienced Magic players had any advice on building decks? I have been tinkering with deck building but I am never sure of how to put together an effective deck. Are there basic rules of thumb I should follow?

Thanks in advance!

Basic basics:
60 cards, 22-24 should be land depending on your deck. If you're playing a different format this changes up a bit.

No more than 4x of any card unless it's a basic land.

Advanced basics:
What kind of deck do you want?
-Protection, creature lockdown, and damage prevention? White. White also excels in clearing the entire board and then generating lots of small, cheap creatures to run over the top of your opponents.

-Board control and being able to negate/control your opponent? Blue. Counterspells and 'bounce' spells (returning creatures to their opponents hand) slow your opponent down long enough for you to play enough creatures to fly over smash them in the face. Blue also gives you access to the mill win condition where you run an opponent's library out of cards.

-Removing opponent's creatures, draining life, and discard effects? Black. Black thrives when it can remove the opponents creatures and shrink cards out of their hand to limit the opponent's responses to what you do.

-Fast creatures and direct damage? Red. The most straightforward of the core colors. Just throw enough creatures to get your opponent's life total down and then throw a big burn spell right at them to finish them off.

-Big creatures, lots of enchantments, and protection from artifacts and enemy enchantments? Green. You're going to look for cards that accelerate your mana base (creatures or enchantments that give you additional mana per turn) to put out 5/5 and larger creatures as early as turn 3 or 4. Then you'll use instants, spells, and enchantments to make them even larger and pummel your opponent with them.

With standard rules in mind, I'd say the most important thing to keep in mind is your 'Mana Curve'. Basically what this is, is the cost of your cards and how they compare to your other cards.

Ex.

You have 35 non-land cards in your deck, a bad Mana Curve would be lopsided or not smooth, like having 20 of your 35 having a converted mana cost of 6+. This leaves you with only 15 cards you can really use on turns 1-4 assuming you drop a land every turn. Instead you want your curve to be more based around the middle, generally about 3-4 Converted Cost (though this varies based on the block you're playing in).

This explains it a bit better than I can. Even though it refers to old cards, the idea remains the same.